Here's thing with the Baku: They are not native to the planet, they're not natively immortal, and no one is telling they have to "upgrade" their lives or embrass technology. All that would happen is that they'd pack up and move to another planet, and if the wanted to go back to living without technolgy they're free to do it.

And welcome to every "horror story" ever told by someone that "knows someone that the EMT/Paramedics let die cause they were an organ donor".

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I used to believe in that kind of crap. I stopped it, for two reasons:

1) It is incredibly insulting to medical professionals of all kinds, to ever think that they would deliberately let someone die, for ANY reason.

2) In any case, if you are an organ donor and you go to the hospital when you're sick, the team treating you is completely separate from the transplant team. So the doctor in charge of saving your life has nothing to do with transplants!

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Yeppers. It also defies basic common sense. As if such a thing could be ongoing and common enough that it's a real concern and yet some how the people doing it would somehow avoid prosecution or fail to bring notice to the issue.

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Here's the thing--They have been on the planet longer than the United States has been a country. What if the American Indians decided to re-take the land today? It's their planet, that's the point.

You completely ignore that the Son'a wanted to completely destroy the planet. The children surely don't have the right to burn the home of the parents down, even if it sat on a gold mine.

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So will the 300-year old 'children' (Sona) ever have any rights to the planet?

Actually I think they have the same rights. If the Baku have more rights because they managed to banish their children (another group of settlers) from the planet should the Federation become involved in an internal skirmish one way or the other.
You can say Picard was rectifying the situation but he really gave the Baku the upper hand. It seems like because they were pretty.

To be honest, I stopped caring about whether they "counted" as native or not by the time the movie finished running because the Baku are sanctimonious hypocrites; at least the only mouthpieces we get for them are. They decry using technology and fighting, but they're A-okay with it being used FOR them as long as they don't personally press the buttons/pull the triggers. Plus, they seem like one of these villages hiding a dark secret anyway, with their perfect little village of white people with perfectly clean garments despite allegedly working fields and stuff all day. Don't even get me started on this vague "you take something away from the man" BS either. You take WHAT away from the man when use use tools to help with tasks?! Apparently nothing, going by your fancy irrigation system.

I was rooting for the Sona by the end.

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How many jobs have been eliminated by technology? Google employs about 300,000 people. Take a look at photos of an assembly line in 1910 versus 2010 in Ford Factories. The first irrigation systems were discovered in 6000 BCE in Mesopotamia. So they aren't allowed to do anything that allows them to feed their community? You have a broad definition of "technology."

You completely ignore that the Son'a wanted to completely destroy the planet. The children surely don't have the right to burn the home of the parents down, even if it sat on a gold mine.

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So will the 300-year old 'children' (Sona) ever have any rights to the planet?

Actually I think they have the same rights. If the Baku have more rights because they managed to banish their children (another group of settlers) from the planet should the Federation become involved in an internal skirmish one way or the other.
You can say Picard was rectifying the situation but he really gave the Baku the upper hand. It seems like because they were pretty.

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"You've brought the Federation into a blood feud, Admiral." Picard didn't do that--the Federation did it. He tries to help, but how many Ba'ku end up captured? How close does he come to dying himself?

They may have a similar claim to the planet, but they don't have a similar claim to the colony. And all of this is semantics, forgetting, that without Data going crazy, the Federation would've killed 600 people to get these rings...or they were "exiled to DIE SLOWLY!"

I always thought of it to be something like this; after their failed take over they were basically told "you want to live the life of the offlanders? well fine, go now and dont come back!"

Why they didnt come back is the big question, the Ba'ku didn't know they or Starfleet were there till Data went mad. The other thing is why did the Son'a need Federation or Starfleet help?

If the Briar patch mucked up communications and sensors like the film suggested couldnt they just sneak in, use their collector and then leave? Unless it is a long drawn out process which could lead to them being discovered later down the line?

For that matter why not simply come back, blast the colony from space and pop there every now and then long before the collector became an option? It must have been a recent development or they would have tried before.

I wonder how many of the Starfleet personnel observing knew what was going on? The Holoship was a Starfleet ship so some of them must have known what was going to happen even if Data didnt.

I always thought of it to be something like this; after their failed take over they were basically told "you want to live the life of the offlanders? well fine, go now and dont come back!"

Why they didnt come back is the big question, the Ba'ku didn't know they or Starfleet were there till Data went mad. The other thing is why did the Son'a need Federation or Starfleet help?

If the Briar patch mucked up communications and sensors like the film suggested couldnt they just sneak in, use their collector and then leave? Unless it is a long drawn out process which could lead to them being discovered later down the line?

For that matter why not simply come back, blast the colony from space and pop there every now and then long before the collector became an option? It must have been a recent development or they would have tried before.

I wonder how many of the Starfleet personnel observing knew what was going on? The Holoship was a Starfleet ship so some of them must have known what was going to happen even if Data didnt.

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I can never figure out what Starfleet were doing with the holoship. Its like why did Marcus put 72 augment-laden torpedoes in the Enterprise in nuTrek.

So they aren't allowed to do anything that allows them to feed their community? You have a broad definition of "technology."

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I'm actually more interested in how they expelled their children from and kept them off an entire planet without using technology?

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Same way Amish expell their children from their community. And those usually don't come back with bulldozers to iron the place flat.

It's just speculation, but I guess at first it simply suffices to say "We don't want you here." and they fly away with the ships they came here (I guess the Son'a ships are actually Ba'ku ships). And then they tried to live their lives in exile, and then got obsessed with staying young. And after that didn't work out, THEN they returned to get the radiation by force. Because that was their last option.

Well, the other option would have been to apologize for the attempted takeover of the village (the reason why they were exiled in the first palce) and set up another colony, but as stated in the film, they didn't want that. The Son'a wanted to be players in the galaxy. They wanted technology, they wanted contact with other species, etc...

People often say the Son'a are double crossing the Federation by being allies of the Dominion... but what if it's the other way around? What if the chance to survive/get revenge against the Bak'u outweighs their allegience to the Dominion so much that they're actually willing to double cross them and side with the Federation instead? All for the chance to get legal access to the Bak'u planet?

People often say the Son'a are double crossing the Federation by being allies of the Dominion... but what if it's the other way around? What if the chance to survive/get revenge against the Bak'u outweighs their allegience to the Dominion so much that they're actually willing to double cross them and side with the Federation instead? All for the chance to get legal access to the Bak'u planet?

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Well, they were enslaving other races, produced Ketracel White for the Dominion, and were ready to harm and kill the Ba'ku for the radiation, and eventually ready to kill Starfleet personel. They were gansters and opportunists. I had the impression they would sell the radiation simply to the highest bidder.

So they aren't allowed to do anything that allows them to feed their community? You have a broad definition of "technology."

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I'm actually more interested in how they expelled their children from and kept them off an entire planet without using technology?

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Same way Amish expell their children from their community. And those usually don't come back with bulldozers to iron the place flat.

It's just speculation, but I guess at first it simply suffices to say "We don't want you here." and they fly away with the ships they came here (I guess the Son'a ships are actually Ba'ku ships). And then they tried to live their lives in exile, and then got obsessed with staying young. And after that didn't work out, THEN they returned to get the radiation by force. Because that was their last option.

Well, the other option would have been to apologize for the attempted takeover of the village (the reason why they were exiled in the first palce) and set up another colony, but as stated in the film, they didn't want that. The Son'a wanted to be players in the galaxy. They wanted technology, they wanted contact with other species, etc...

The Ba'ku simply didn't want that, and that's their good right.

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Um, really? We're talking about an ENTIRE PLANET here. The Baku have no right to say what happens beyond the borders of their village (if that, considering that ownership of the planet is , at best, ill-defined). If the Baku AND S'ona own the planet, then there is no logical reason why the S'ona should not simply set up shop on the opposite hemisphere and use their superior technology to boot their insufferable forebears off-world. The fact that they don't has far more to do with shoddy writing than than with any supposed moral high ground occupied by Picard or the Baku.

^Almost every argument used to defend the Baku is speculation, especially the reapeated claims that they "own" the planet. The movie makes NO SUCH CLAIM.

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Considering you haven't provided any evidence that someone else owned the planet and gave it to the federation (and no the whole well somebody must have is crap pulled out of an ass until you have proof) then unless the federation colonized it (which they didn't) or the Ba'ku join the federation (which they didn't) the federation doesn't own the planet.

Also I find it funny that the Ba'ku are being held to a standard the federation never had to before when they set up colonies.